Portfolio
Raffles Qingshui Bay ResortQingshui Bay, China
Green features of Bardessono were recently profiled in Hospitality Design.
The property will obtain approximately half of its electricity needs from a 200-kilowatt photovoltaic solar system mounted and concealed atop the hotel's flat-topped roofs. To heat and cool guestrooms as well as the property's domestic water supply, a system of 82 geothermal wells were drilled to work with a specially developed ground source heat pump system.
Read the rest of the article to find out more.
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WATG was deeply saddened to hear of the events in Mumbai last week. It is very unfortunate that innocent people were hurt and killed, and our thoughts go out to the victims’ friends and families.
Our firm has been designing projects in India for years now, and in particular, Mumbai. India has always been an extremely supportive and rewarding place for our designers to work, and our clients there are warm and gracious.
Over the last 60 years, WATG has been designing experiences that lift the spirit. Our hope is that the people of Mumbai will have their spirits lifted knowing that they are not alone in the world community.
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Last week I was fortunate enough to attend some great sustainable design sessions at the Greenbuild 2008 Conference in Boston. Two of the more inspiring and very motivating discussions were given not by architects, but by naturalists deeply rooted in looking to nature and biology to help solve our green building challenges. For us designers who skimmed through our biology and natural science classes, take note. Biologists are now coming to the design table.
The idea of synthesizing research in the natural environment with design decisions for the built environment is a fascinating springboard for solving challenges and creating opportunities for innovation. At the heart of this is biomimicry and the Biomimicry Guild. Biomimicry is the relatively new science that basically asks the question: What can we learn from the 3.8 billion years of research and development that nature has already invested in? And how can this inform our built environment?
One session titled “Beyond Platinum: Revolutionary Green” was given by three presenters, one of them being Dayna Baumeister who is a co-founder of the Biomimicry Guild. Besides providing some very engaging dialogue about sustainability, she posed the notion of creating conditions conducive to life. She and her co-presenters painted a very compelling picture about how we need to think about sustainability holistically, much like biologists who use systems thinking (understanding the components of a system in the context of relationships with each other and with other systems). Understanding relationships (building, nature, occupant) and contributions to a ‘system’ is key.
The other motivating discussion was the closing plenary for the conference given by E.O. Wilson and Janine Benyus (co-founder of the Biomimicry Guild and author of Biomimicry: Innovation Inspired by Nature). Theirs was a call to designers to become students of nature. Their message was to let nature inform our designs by looking at a project site and asking the questions “how are the organisms meeting their needs here?” and “how can our building function as well as nature in this location?” Valid questions that approach design decisions in a different manner….questions in which we need those biologists at the table to help us find answers. If you are interested in learning more, go to: www.asknature.org and www.biomimicryguild.com.
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